1817, 18 of Seventh Month. Harvest two or three weeks later than formerly. Reaping � had eleven hands, and with very hard scrabbling they cut it all down about fourteen acres and on the whole very good.
19. We got about two-thirds of it in. A smart shower catched some.
20. First Day. At our meeting. A very poor, low shut up time. Almost completely overwhelmed with ease, dullness, and indifferency. Hardly deserved the name of a meeting. I pitied the sincere seekers. Getting in our harvest and hay. Weather showery, but we scrabbled and got along very well. Our barn never better filled with grain and choice, good hay.
24. Fifth Day. At our meeting. Very small, people very busy getting in grain and hay. Weather rainy, but yet I believe harvest is generally got in. Our meeting, though low and poor, I thought not destitute of some savor of life and ownings of truth. Came off without condemnation. I have read an account that the persecutors of our first Friends said of them that they would keep up their meetings if their corn dropped in the ground, but they lived and attended their meetings so as to make it answer a good purpose. They pleased the Lord and obtained his favor, and that was enough and far transcended all this world could afford. But they did not tend their meetings in a poor, dry, formal way, nor were they overwhelmed with a spirit of ease and dullness.
28. First Day. At our meeting. I thought it a very poor, low time, but I don�t know, for I was so unwell I could hardly sit meeting. William Ashby of Philadelphia came to see me Seventh Day night and will at meeting and had acceptable service and Ebenezer Roberts, also my wife and children, and William Ashby went to a meeting at four at the schoolhouse near the Green Tree Tavern and they say they had a very open, good meeting. Hinchman Hain appointed it and was very large among a people who seldom tend any sort of meeting. I have been twelve months trying to open a door amongst them, and now I hope it will be occupied. This is the 2nd meeting with them. Very busy getting hay and favored to get along, though it goes very hard with me.
[Margin] I so poorly I could not go with them.
August 1817
Fifth Day. At our meeting I thought to me more lively, open and satisfactory than common. By thee, said David, have I run through a troop and leaped over a wall [Psalm 18:29]. We have many troops to encounter and walls of opposition.